How To Watch Football: 52 Rules for Understanding the Beautiful Game, On and Off the Pitch

5* for the great idea of a book. I had looked forward to reading & especially learning. But tiny text ruined the experience, so gave up after 5 chapters. Will be ok for youthful eyes, but a 70 year old with very good eyesight who has never had a book reading problem, found this titchy text unreadable. I never need reading glasses, but tried some but with no improvement. I used a magnifying glass & that resolved problem, but too much effort to bother. It seemed like 6 or 7 point size, which is half the size of a traditional paperback. Then, some boxed areas were black text on colour eg green background, destroying contrast. Some caption text was crazily grey outlined white hollow text on a white background which made it even more unreadable. A graphics design rule breaker. I used my phone camera to zoom in to read that, with a struggle. Such a disappointment, as the Tifo team are great and I applaud their entertaining online & youtube work. I suspect the book is great & 5 stars for that assumption because I do not want to put off teens or 20 to 40 somethings who will manage the text size and enjoy an informative read.To be fair, text size is not such an issue when read in perfect lighting, eg outdoors, but artificial lighting eg indoors or evening is the condition for older eyes which makes tiny text very difficult. I've since resumed reading the book outdoors (without spec's) and it's highly recommended. Well authored. Well done.Since, bought Kindle version, which resolved all low lighting small text issues of printed book. So long as read on a colour tablet of at least 10". Much easier to read and a pleasure, as the back illumination enables reading any time of day regardless of a low lit room. Also larger tablet colour kindle enables "search" and "index" options, also backlit graphics & illustrations which are easier to read than if evening low lit reduced contrast book pages.

The book covers 52 topics, with 2 pages devoted to each. The topics cover things such as the history and purpose of things you perhaps wouldn't think of such as the lines on the pitch, gives short biographies of important players and figures in the history of football, and insights on various other things such as playing styles and the business of football.This book would be especially good gift for a football fan who is not otherwise a reader, as they could easily read one or two of the topics within a few minutes, then put the book down to come back to at a later date and not feel lost.I really enjoyed the art style and how more complex topics were often accompanied by a simple graphic to help ease understanding.I would like to point out a small mistake I noticed. The book claims Athletic Bilbao have not finished lower than 14th in La Liga. In the 2006/07 season Athletic came within a point of relegation when they finished 17th.

So disappointing! Was looking forward to this given the YouTube channel is brilliant. Incredibly padded out and actually very small in size. Just few lines of text on any subject spread across 3 pages in the book. A lot of the book seems aimed at people who have no understanding of football at all. Maybe others will like this more.

As someone who enjoys scrolling endlessly while doing my business I decided to keep this book in my bathroom. Reading a few chapters after my morning coffee has been a delight. I really enjoy my IBS now.

10/10. I can now pretend I know what I'm on about when it comes to football.